


recalibration

by enemeriad



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:52:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemeriad/pseuds/enemeriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna counts the differences between her relationship with Harvey before and now, fantasising about deals with the devil and the men that wanted her too much and not enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	recalibration

_You and I walk a fragile line,  
I have known it all this time and I never thought I'd live to see it break.  
It's getting down and it's all too quiet and I can't trust anything now,  
and it's coming over you like it's all a big mistake._  
  
  
"Never," she tells Rachel like it matters to the young woman whose mouth says no but eyes say yes. She watches her faith glimmer and flicker and wonders what it's like to have an easy love, a simple love, a romantic love where it's all about timing and getting rid of past girlfriends and not demons in the closet and more baggage than check-in allows.   
  
But Donna's on the long haul flight. She's done this before and she can do it again. She draws a shallow line in the sand (again) and prays the tide doesn't wash it away. She's done this time. She's moving on this time. She can bury it this time.  
  
Mike kisses Rachel in the mailroom and Donna tries not to care about the 6pm meeting with  _Scarlet_ at the Waldorf Harvey cancelled his afternoon for.  
  
'The feelings go away' reverberates around her collar as she straightens Harvey's lapel and tells him to 'go get 'em Tiger.'  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She sits on the subway, trying not to emanate displeasure at being demoted to public transport because Ray is busy this morning and tries not to read over the shoulder of the young woman sitting next to her. The article is Cosmo presumably, but her eyes skim the page and she can't help but scowl at the skinny, twenty year old, causcasian first world problems that are headlines. But it catches her attention and she reads the entire first page before the young woman gets off at Fifth.   
  
It's not a bad idea dating someone else, flushing out the messy/complicated with something a few blocks further than the corner of her desk and someone that doesn't breathe depositions and eat prosecutors for breakfast.   
  
Maybe a bank executive, she thinks, so at least she keeps her comfort zone limited to lying, arrogant, self-centered men. To compliment her career in flame-throwing.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She gets to the office before Harvey, before Jessica and before Louis can ambush her with sweet-talking the assistant-secretary at Bendels to let him have a meeting with her boss.   
  
By the time any of them arrive, she's introduced Carla to her new assistant and given him a tour of the place, fixed the fax machine and played phone tag with the IT department while she proof read Harvey's speech for the Pearson Hardman mixer on Thursday night.   
  
"Donna."  
  
"Good morning to you too, Harvey," she tells the navy pin-stripe shadow in front of her. "I'm good thank-you, so kind of you to ask." He rolls his eyes and retreats into his office. By the time she goes over to hand him the printed copy of his speech, his lips are twirked into a smug smile.  
  
She lines her retaliatory barb with just enough sass that she can take this moment and stash it somewhere deep inside where she keeps all the reasons to never let herself pass a  _never ever_ _._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She tries to pretend she's not dreading this date. Her lack of interest in this man has her ignoring his constant flirting. She sounds nonchalant when she replies with a restaurant and a time. There's no way in hell he's picking her up at her home.   
  
And he doesn't disappoint, per say. Most of the evening, she just finds herself so, so bored with him and his one-sided diatribe on why being a chartered accountant is the way to succeed. He asks her questions about her life and what she does and doesn't belittle her when she says she's a legal secretary at Pearson and Hardman. He is polite and pays for the meal and slips her into the cab with a chaste kiss on the cheeks.   
  
There's a call on her answer phone when she gets home with a 'i had a great time tonight. you're a terrific woman, donna. it was a pleasure.'  
  
She deletes it before she can let herself analyse the implications of her absolute loathing for him.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(-donna knows a lot of things but masochism is not one of them. She decides to date  _Jonathan_ becausewhat the hell, what does she have to lose?-)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It is easy on their dates to forget about the office and Louboutins that pinch like the person that gave them to her and the fact that she's slipped down another place on  _his_  speed dial (Donna Paulsen is now second best to  _Michael Ross)_ and Louis' inability to properly articulate his apology.   
  
But it's totally fine, obviously, because she covers it all up with a vermilion shade of lipstick and an easy smile. She'll accept Louis' bribes and Jessica's tight smile and even Mike's apologetic grimace as long as she doesn't have to look at disappointment any longer.   
  
Johnathan holds her hand over the table and talks to her about the huge scandal at work with his boss and her assistant being caught in the elevator.   
  
'We all thought she just hated people in general. Guess it was just a question of the gender.'  
  
His smile is quick and doesn't come with a catch that spells out  _heartbreak_ which is why when he asks her up to his apartment on the fifth date, her reparatry remark comes easily. She knows better than to hold onto feelings that aren't mutual and can easily be dissolved with the right mixture.   
  
Casual sex with this man is the trick. Rachel would be so proud of her method of forgetting.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(-in the taxi cab she thinks about the way harvey&donna will never be harvey&donna anymore. they're still close of course and that will never change but they will never be equal anymore. her pride in harvey for never treating her like the hierachial underling she is, moved to a fierce disappointment when he didn't do anything to stop her getting fired. betrayal looks a lot like self-preservation in the wrong frame.  
  
she remembers him finally ambushing her outside her grocery store and looking at her like she was  _supposed to just come back_  like it didn't matter that he hadn't pushed or shoved or thought outside the box like he'd done for mike. like it didn't matter that she was everythinganythingallofhim and that they were like  _this._ like she wasn't suddenly this woman that gave up everything for a man she loved.  
  
he made her look weak and pathetic and when he didn't reciprocate the relationship build on a foundation of loyalty and trust and mutual respect crumbled beneath her fingers. he took his career and his success and shut her out and let her sink into her sacrifices because that were her choices and she had to live with that. but johnathan's fingers squeeze into hers and she remembers that at the very least she can bury the excesses of her ' _complicated'_  into johnathan chartered accounting and nothingness.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The flowers arrive before she does and she calmly (read: hurriedly) walks towards her desk. If Harvey saw them, there would be all sorts of awkward questions to dodge and those looks like he didn't know what to think. The flowers are tulips and she can see the explanation in their sweet, sunny petals that scream 'you're not just a fuck. i respect you.'   
  
She cringes visibly, eyes surreptitiously flicking through the glass to Harvey's desk where he's seated at his desk. He catches her glance, rolls his eyes as he points at the phone.   
  
' _Mathers,'_ he mouthes and then as her fingers clutch the bouquet, his smile turns smug and he leans back in his chair with all the self-assurance she hatesloves him for.   
  
Her smile is summoned from somewhere before she turns to throw the flowers away so isn't reminded of how  _sick_ she feels that she's fucked up a seemingly easy relationship with a boy (because really, flowers to the office? is he channeling his pubescence?) that already has cobwebs and attachments and 'deadlines'.   
  
She shudders and then presses a heeled foot to the waste dispenser.   
  
Good riddance to bad rubbish.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
-there are solutions to these types of aches she wears ridiculously high heels and the  _tight tight_ dresses so she can reminisce about the times when he used to look at her not with the current  _why not_ but the  _what if._  
  
there were young and twenty and donna still didn't appreciate 'less is more'. her class was all in her acidic tongue and 3 inch spikes whereas harvey built himself on his personality before he instated the  _persona._ the thirteen thousand dollar suits imported from bennega on a personal favour from bottega himself came later. before the silk lining and the metrosexual haircut they were both rough and cut. when he would hand her back case files after a win and his fingers would linger a second too long, when bottles of whiskey would get taken from cameron's cabinet and toasted to with both of them sitting on the edge of his desk, like they were sitting on the edge of the world with the future so bright, bright, bright in front of them. back when donna would look at  _more_ with a ravaging thirst for it and harvey would test the water, test the limits and then-  
  
her mind catches her. scolds her being so  _childish._  
  
so she stops dreaming about the old times. {she keeps the fuck-me heels though.}-  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Johnathan is a gentlemen and a world class act. Her desk becomes a florist and Jessica jsut raises an eyebrow when she passes her desk into Harvey's office. Donna treads the line between writing him and sleeping with him again, deliberating the way she could possibly make this quite possibly extremely nice man suffer as long as possible.   
  
Harvey comes out after fifteen minutes with Jessica, half of his mouth pulled up into a grin.   
  
'We'll see if he dares.'  
  
'And Harvey?' Jessica adds as she closes the door. 'If you give him anything to go on, that includes you Donna, I will personally put you both back on the 46th floor.'  
  
Harvey just grins, his eyes moving to look at  _her._  
  
'Getting serious then,' he tells her, the sarcasm dripping from his tone. She can't quite force a smile this time and so she laughs instead, pushing out something she thinks sounds like disparaging.   
  
'Careful there, Harvey. You almost sound jealous.'  
  
He looks at her, head tilted to the side and just stares for a minute and she can see the lines of their friendship on his face, watches him as he lets her interpret this as she wants. Consoling, friendly, amiable, hopeful.   
  
But she just sees  _red._ Second best splashed all over his complacent expression. He winks at her and pulls out his phone as she slowly sits back down, swallowing back the lump in her throat watching the fragmented pieces of their harvey&donna recalibrate, twist and realign. She doesn't know what they are. Can't understand the change when all she did, all she's ever done, all she will ever do, is protect him. From himself with Cameron, and from the world with Daniel.   
  
She stills for a moment and then she smiles, laughs to herself as he picks up his phone and says:  
  
'Mike, call Scarlet. I need to see her.'  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When Johnathon arrives late on her doorstep, gushing to her about how his neice was in a car crash and would she please excuse him for being tardy she doesn't know what to do with that much personal information and she just stares at him for a split second before she remembers that not everyone is an emotionally demented suit.   
  
It takes a moment longer for her to remember that normal humans usually ask questions in these situations and then begins the, 'is she okay? what happened? that sounds awful! should you be at the hospital? you should. you should go. do i mind? of course not. this is family. this can take a raincheck. i'm free next week. you just go. this is important.'  
  
She ends up alone on a friday night (no difference there) in shoes she hasn't worn since she worked for Cameron Davis and a feeling of rejection she can't place and doesn't understand.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
So she blocks his calls, screens his texts and diverts the flowers to all the executive legal assistants around the city that she knows,  _just in case,_ she ever needs a favour.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(sometime later she thinks that perhaps maybe a litle that it all had to do with the fact that johnathan wanted her too much and harvey didn't want her at all.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
-it doesn't do to remember  _that night,_ those conversations, those words tossed into the mix, that battened down the hatches and put them on this road, created this cityscape for them. a decade worth of friendship or protection of  _i would do anything for you_ and  yet the only man that she'd give it all up for wouldn't want a second of it.   
  
wouldn't want to  _break_ her.   
  
is it supposed to make her feel better that she didn't get herself tangled, messied, bruised when he showed her how much he valued her?-  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Donna tries the whole evasion tactic for about five minutes until Harvey eyes her down with his 'i know you better than this' look and she goes back to a frankly academy award winning performance where they trade barbs and she doesn't let him win, not even once, not even a little bit because then he would know something was wrong.   
  
  
  
  
  
(and he does know her better the smug bastard, he does know her best but there is one thing that donna is willing to bet he doesn't know.   
  
donna paulsen never demoted harvey specter to second place. he was already there to begin with.)


End file.
